19-year-old follows parents down Las Vegas aisle

AS the daughter of Bob Geldof and Paula Yates, Peaches Geldof has grown up in the glare of the celebrity limelight.

19-year-old follows parents down Las Vegas aisle

The 19-year-old’s love of partying and rocker boyfriends has echoes of the behaviour that made her mother famous.

Even Peaches’ decision to marry American singer Max Drummey in a Las Vegas chapel mirrored her parents’ own wedding more than 20 years ago.

But with celebrity watchers expressing concerns over her activities, Peaches was forced to deny rumours she had suffered a drugs overdose when she collapsed at home last month.

Her mother died after taking an accidental heroin overdose when Peaches was just 11.

“Wild child” Paula Yates lived a celebrity lifestyle and met her early death in September 2000, leaving behind four daughters.

Peaches’ parents had their first child together, Fifi Trixibelle, in 1983.

They married in Las Vegas in 1986 and had two more daughters, Peaches and her younger sister Pixie.

After nine years as Mrs Geldof, Yates left the Boomtown Rat singer for another rock star — INXS singer Michael Hutchence.

Yates and Geldof were divorced in 1996 and Yates went on to have a daughter — Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily — with her Australian boyfriend.

But tragedy struck in 1997 when Hutchence was found dead in a Sydney hotel room in an apparent suicide.

As Yates struggled to cope, Geldof embarked on a court battle to gain custody of his three daughters.

Since Yates’ death, he has also cared for Tiger Lily.

Speaking in 2002, Geldof described the pain he experienced during his divorce, the custody battle and his ex-wife’s death.

He said that during “those nightmare years” he endured “universes of grief and deserts of emptiness”.

Peaches and her sisters were children while that devastation went on around them and, while Geldof sought to protect them, it is unlikely that the past will not have had any effect.

Born Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof on March 16 1989, Peaches has spent her teenage years under the watchful eye of her father, whose girlfriend is French actress Jeanne Marine.

But since moving into a flat in north London, she has been free to enjoy life as a regular on the London party scene.

Before her wedding, Peaches had been seen on the arm of a string of rockers — including, most recently, The Horrors front man Faris Badwan.

Peaches, who began writing newspaper columns at the age of 14, appears to have her mother’s love of the limelight, combined with a sprinkling of her father’s political activism.

She has not strayed far from the media world, working as a columnist, TV presenter and DJ.

Peaches has used television documentaries to send out messages on issues such as religion and celebrity culture.

When she was 17, she studied the fashion world for a special edition of Tonight with Trevor McDonald called Peaches Geldof’s Body Issues, in which she criticised the “culture of thinness”.

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